Ukraine economics minister Aivaras Abromavicius resignation: ‘wise’ rats are abandoning sinking ship

Recent resignation of the economics minister Aivaras Abromavicius is very telling. Aivaras Abromavicius is Lithuanian, one of the entire crop of foreign ‘talent’ hired by Poroshenko to manage the country. Together with him, many of his staffers left too.

Various ‘leaders’ of the EU and US issued alarmed statements after Abromavicius resignation, calling him a ‘great reformer’ and ‘Ukraine’s hope,’ and demanding his reinstatement. When US/EU say jump, Poroshenko immediately asks, ‘how high?’ Poroshenko, this ‘leader of absolutely sovereign Ukraine’ begged Abromavicius to stay, but was rebuffed by the latter.

Of course he was: you can’t stop a rat once it’s sure the ship is on its way down!

You know me: usually you wouldn’t catch me quoting from US MSM. But this one exception – it’s that juicy and THAT FUNNY! So, a quote from Bloomberg article from January 2015, Can This Man Save Ukraine’s Economy?:

“Aivaras Abromavicius has managed money-losing funds for years, but he never presided over anything as hopeless as the Ukrainian economy. Still, the recently appointed economy minister is full of good cheer and certain he and his colleagues in the new cabinet can turn things around. It all depends on whether international lenders give Ukraine enough time to reform itself at the pace the government is setting.

Strictly speaking, Abromavicius should never have become a government official in Ukraine. The 38-year-old asset manager is Lithuanian by birth. He moved to Kiev six years ago after marrying a Ukrainian, the chief executive of an agricultural company in which a private equity fund run by Abromavicius’s employer, the Swedish investment firm East Capital, took a stake. He only gave up his Lithuanian citizenship after accepting the ministerial post.

Two more foreigners – U.S. citizen Natalie Jaresko and Georgian Oleksandr Kvitashvili – accepted Ukrainian citizenship at the same time, to become finance and health ministers, respectively.

I asked Abromavicius why he was picked over all the other fund managers and investment bankers in the world – surely there are some with ties to Ukraine at least as strong as his own? He replied, simply: “I guess there was no one bigger than me in Kiev.” East Capital, he says, manages a $5 billion portfolio, and he’s a partner (according to data compiled by Bloomberg, his share in East Capital Explorer AB is worth $372,000).

That isn’t much by Western standards, but it’s enough. Abromavicius’s salary at the ministry is a few hundred dollars a month – he doesn’t even know how much exactly – and Ukraine needs people with means of their own in the cabinet, to help ensure they enter government for the right reasons. His Ukrainian passport is about a month old, and he admits to understanding about 85 percent of what he hears in government meetings held in Ukrainian, which he doesn’t speak. Still, he describes himself as a patriot.

The two biggest funds Abromavicius managed were East Capital Russian Fund, with a five-year total return of minus 46 percent, and East Capital Eastern European Fund, with a five-year total return of minus 30 percent. The last time the entities saw any noticeable growth was in 2011. That’s not really Abromavicius’s fault: Eastern European equities, especially Russian ones, haven’t performed well in recent years. Ukraine, for its part, doesn’t even have a stock market to speak of. It’s an economic wasteland.”

This was an excerpt from 

Earth Shift Report 2 (NEW and expanded):

UKRAINE: TRUTH, LIES & FUTURE HOPE

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